The weird and artificial Tory leadership race

That drawn out process is intended to give the candidates more time to show their strengths and their weaknesses while MPs are still in charge of the process, a contrast to the procedures used when Liz Truss was selected as leader.

MPs put two candidates in front of members assuming they’d make the “right” choice, only for them to go the other way. The Truss/Sunak contest was whittled down to two extremely quickly, with a long roadshow only once the decision was with the membership. This new expanded process is intended to keep power with the parliamentarians.

It does make things quite weird and artificial, though: the four candidates are appealing to a constituency of just 120 people. In reality, that means lots of private political lobbying and horse trading, but there has to be a show of holding a contest. These function as an audition, but really serve to provide fodder for the dealing behind closed doors.

Generally, because of the split in the Conservative Party, one candidate from the party’s right-wing faction makes it to the last two and faces off against someone from the “pragmatist” faction.

In this race, Badenoch and Jenrick are the representatives of the “right”, while the “pragmatists” are Cleverly and Tugendhat. But things have got a lot blurrier than they were a few years ago – for one, with Jenrick in first place with 33 MPs’ votes and Badenoch on 28, it’s possible that the two “right” candidates face off against each other. But also, the two “pragmatists” are running well to the right of almost every candidate in the 2022 contest.

It is now standard to say that the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights, it is all but mandatory to support the Rwanda scheme, and the Tory base is getting all the red meat it wants. Differentiating the candidates so far is more about emphasis and style than it is about policy positions – so let’s quickly take each in turn.

Robert Jenrick used to be scathingly nicknamed Robert “Generic” by his colleagues, who have noted his positioning in the party seems to have changed to suit his own advancement. He was once seen as one of the pragmatists, and is charged with tacking right and resigning tactically once he saw which way the wind was blowing. His strength so far has been in convincing the party’s MPs he can represent the right while being a “sensible” political figurehead – but the membership are yet to be convinced.

Kemi Badenoch by contrast has better right-wing credentials and is better liked by the party base, so far as polling is reliable. If she can make it to the final ballot, she is the favourite to win – which is prompting moves from the other factions to suggest deals to keep her off the list, perhaps by lending votes one way or another in the final round. Badenoch is seen as somewhat fixated on culture war issues, and less comfortable when she’s off them – potentially a strength with the Tories’ most online followers, but less so with the older offline ones.

The two “pragmatist” candidates are trailing well behind at present, on 21 votes each, seven behind Badenoch’s 28. That means the temptation for each is to focus their fire on the other, so that they do not cancel each other out.

Cleverly’s allies engaged in a confident briefing campaign ahead of the second vote on Tuesday, suggesting his “likeability” could put him ahead, and that he might even place first in the poll of MPs – only for him to have picked up no votes whatsoever versus the first round (Tugendhat gained five, by contrast).

A Tory in a rival campaign even suggested Cleverly had picked up a couple of Priti Patel’s supporters (after she was eliminated in the first round) – suggesting that he had lost a few supporters of his own to a rival.

That would leave Tom Tugendhat as the “pragmatist” with momentum on his side, even if he is the one who most needed it, coming as he did fifth in the first round. Tugendhat tacked firmly to the right versus his previous leadership run, but this is believed to be tactical more than it is a reflection of a new guiding ideology.

It is Tugendhat as leader who most worries the Labour benches. They think he’d be a more effective opposition leader and a tougher challenge at the ballot box than his rivals. In theory, this would be a huge boon to his campaign, but history has tended to show that the candidates the opposing parties fear rarely win.

The Conservatives worried far more about David Miliband than his brother, or the other candidates, but David Miliband ended up leaving politics. After that, they fretted more about Chuka Umunna as leader – only for him to also to leave first frontline politics and then the industry altogether. The traits that make opposing parties fear a candidate are often the same ones that mean they aren’t truly loved by their own.

That’s the field of candidates, and that’s how it will remain until after they all speak at the Conservative Party conference and are voted down to a final two a week later.

The race will continue, but given it is party conference season, the autumn budget, and the last few weeks of the US presidential campaign over that time, don’t expect it to make all that many headlines. Such is the reality of the Conservatives’ life now – they are in opposition, and depending how they choose, could remain so for some time to come.